Page 3 - June 2020 Track N Times

FEATURE STORY

The Circle of Life
By Brad Goettsch, Manager, Rail Grinding

The year was 1988 Ronald Reagan, was Presi-
dent and George H.W. Bush was elected as our
next President, best picture was Rain Man and
Washington Redskins won the Superbowl with
the cost of an add at $645,000. The price of a
gallon of gas was $0.95 cents. The railroads
were in the learning stages of rail grinding and
the demand for the service was growing. Loram
had the following Production Grinders RG4, 6,
8, 9, 10, 11, and 14 in operation in the US / Can-
ada and a decision was made to bring another
grinder into this world. A beautiful new grinder was built with A-cab, B-cab, two water cars and a caboose. They called
it RG15. Each cab would have two engine-gen sets with 1710 Cummins engines and 500 KW generators. Computer
controlled amp settings and carriage sequencing was still in its infancy. RG15 was brought into this environment at the
beginning stages of this technology. Cell phones were non-existent so any phone calls would have to be done by pay
phone. RG15 performed as expected and successfully worked on railroads throughout the US and Mexico. However, it
has spent most of its time working in Mexico. It seems
like only yesterday we had shoulder bolts, counter-
weights, segmented stone holders and were manually
calling sequence points from the catwalks.
Throughout the years since the inception of RG15, Lo-
ram has made several technological advances with the
production grinders allowing for safer operation and fast-
er grind speeds. In addition to technology, the layout of
the machines has changed by adding a Front Control Car
to the consist. This gave the operator a better sight line
for obstacles and it allowed for single person operation.
With this change we also re-named the machines by add-
ing a 3 to the beginning signifying a cab forward style ma-
chine or 300 series. RG15 wasn’t fortunate enough to
get a Front Control Car so it never experienced the sig-
nificance of being in the 300 series group of machines.

In the year 2010 Barack Obama was President, best picture was The Hurt Locker, The Saints won the Superbowl and a
30 second add cost $3,000,000. The price of a gallon of gas was $2.79. This is also the year a new concept in rail grind-
ing came about with the production of RG401 and the beginning of the 400 series of railgrinders. This brought in the
new idea of using buggies for grinding and eliminating the standard carriages. More technology for better monitoring of
the machine systems and troubleshooting most machine issues. All this has allowed for grind speeds pushing 20 miles per

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